The Stranger's Woes (7 page)

I wasn’t sulking, of course. A pleasant meander through the taverns of Echo in the company of Sir Kofa was an enviable misfortune. It’s just that my feeling of contentment is only complete when I am slightly indignant about something. And praise be the Magicians when there’s a reason for it, even the most paltry one.

I returned to the House by the Bridge at around midnight. Not that arresting Toyo Baklin (he was the brazen card sharper) took so long. It’s just that my presence improves Sir Kofa Yox’s appetite, and the Master Eavesdropper wasn’t in too big a hurry to get rid of me. I returned to the House by the Bridge in the best of spirits. If someone had happened to want to pull my strings, this would have been the time to do it.

I was about to turn the corner to our Secret Entrance when a painfully familiar penguinesque silhouette propping up a leafy tree by the visitor’s entrance caught my attention. I whistled. Anday Pu in the flesh! This was getting interesting.

“Are you writing a crime story, pal?” I said. “What about my cats? Did you already finish that one?”

“Good night to you, Sir Max,” Anday said in a gloomy voice. “I’ve been waiting here for three hours. I was beginning to think I might as well just give up.”

“You’re in luck,” I said. “People usually have to wait much longer for me. We’re even considering installing a bed for visitors right by the entrance. But why are you waiting outside, anyway? We have a comfortable waiting room. You can sit in an armchair, smoke, and . . . well, that’s about all you can do there. But at least it beats waiting outside.”

“I don’t like your Ministry,” Anday confided. “It’s packed with rodents.”

“Come again?”

“Rodents.”

Finally it dawned on me. “Ah, coppers! Yes, there are quite a few running around in there. On the other hand, they’ve got to hang out somewhere. And if those fellows think they have something to do at the House by the Bridge, who am I to shatter their illusions? What’s wrong? You scared?”

“I’m not scared. I just don’t like them. I’m no chicken, but . . . you no catch, Sir Max.”

“I dig,” I said, laughing. “You may not believe it, but back in the day I couldn’t stand them either. And I was scared of them, too. One didn’t exclude the other. It wasn’t so very long ago, either. Let’s go, Fourth Estate.”

“What did you call me?” The poor guy was almost beside himself with confusion.

“Forget it. Let’s go to my office. We’ll drink some kamra and eat cookies. Am I making myself clear?”

Anday cheered up considerably, and I went into the House by the Bridge. He followed close behind me, trying to hide from the stern gaze of Boboota’s subordinates behind my Mantle of Death. Curiously, he didn’t seem to be afraid of me at all.

“Well, what happened to you?” I asked, closing the office door behind me. “Or were you just bored? Go ahead and sit down. Grab an armchair. Truth doesn’t hide in your backside—you won’t be covering anything up. Come to think of it, I wonder where in the body truth does hide? You don’t know by any chance, do you? You journalists are an informed bunch.”

Anday sat down obediently, turning this way and that to see better. He glanced at Kurush, asleep on the back of a chair, and brushed my cigarettes off the table absentmindedly, not registering the slightest interest in what the stuff was or where it had come from. He didn’t deign to notice the couriers either, but when the jug of kamra appeared on the table, he immediately dropped back down to earth and filled up his mug. Finally Anday allowed himself to spill his troubles.

“Sir Max,” he began solemnly. “My editor, Sir Rogro Jiil, doesn’t catch a thing. I think he’s lost his mind. The dinner’s over once and for all.”

“Really?” I said. “What has he done? Did he kill and eat a dozen hopeful young journalists? Or something more original? In any case, no one at the House by the Bridge is going to help him. We could use a good doctor here ourselves. But that’s a state secret, you understand.”

“I catch, Sir Max,” Anday said. “What a joker you are—sound the alarm!”

“It’s nice to meet someone who appreciates me,” I said, grinning. “All in all, today I’m full, contented, and happy, so I’m not in very good form. Anyway, back to your editor.”

“He doesn’t want to publish my article!”

I laughed, mainly from surprise. “The article about my cats? What an insult.”

“No, no. The one about the cats he liked, and even offered to pay for it—tomorrow or a year from now, you never know with him. Sometimes he drags it out, sometimes he doesn’t. No, no, it was another article he didn’t like.”

“You sure do write a lot,” I said.

That was really no surprise. All the bureaucrats and writers of the Unified Kingdom have self-scribing tablets at their disposal. Your head has to be very empty indeed not to produce something under those circumstances.

“I wrote about you, Sir Max. It will be such a sensation that all those tabloid slaves might as well just give up.”

“What kind of sensation is that? That I wash my own living rooms floors? For a lyrical outpouring like that, Sir Juffin Hully would bite your editor’s head off, and yours, too, while he’s at it.”

“Oh, come on! As if I have nothing better to do than write about your floors.”

Anday spoke with the intonations of a queen trying to insult a dozen stable boys. He pursed his lips, glanced haughtily at me, tossed his head, and turned his noble profile away from me. Then, just as suddenly as he had taken umbrage, he stared at me penitently.

“It won’t kill you to take a look at it, will it?” he said, offering me two self-scribing tablets.

I peered closely at it. The story was called “A Tête-à-tête with Death.” Simple and tasteful. The contents were completely in keeping with the title. The story implied that I had held the hapless journalist captive in my living room for a whole day. Enchanted giant cats guarded the prisoner, and I had to absent myself from the premises to perform my next murder. Anday didn’t skimp on the details, describing my evil cunning, the bloodthirsty roars of Ella and Armstrong, and his own stouthearted courage.

“Take it away!” I threatened. “And destroy it. You’re a swell guy, Anday, but if this is printed in a single newspaper I will personally spit on you. If you spread this blizzard of blather to your girlfriends, I wouldn’t necessarily object, though.”

“You no catch! I thought you’d like it,” Anday said. “I thought you’d send a call to Rogro and he’d have to just give up.”

“You thought I’d help you publish this garbage?” I said. “What do you take me for, friend? Do you think I can’t read?”

“I thought you’d like it,” Anday repeated, sighing. “But you no catch. Well, never mind. It happens. I’m sorry for bothering you, Max. Will you forgive me?”

He made a pitiful sight.

“Do you want some dinner?” I said, feeling generous.

Anday brightened up immediately. The tragic depths of his eyes melted, until he was literally beaming.

“Of course you do! What a fool I am to even ask.” And I sent a call to the
Glutton
.

“Takeout from the
Glutton Bunba
?” Anday said with the air of a connoisseur, sniffing the contents of his portion. “Nice little place. How I used to live it up there back in the day. Sound the alarm! The crowns just spilled out of my pockets onto the floor, and I wouldn’t even bend down to pick them up. I left that to the sweaty plebs.”

“Really?” I was surprised. The fellow didn’t look like a rich man, even a former one who was down on his luck.

“Ah, Sir Max, how little you know,” Anday said, shaking his head. His face bore the mournful expression of a retired king. “Do you think I’ve been writing these blasted newspaper articles all my life? Give it up! I wasn’t even ninety when I became the Master of Refined Utterances at the Royal Court. I had just completed my studies, and I had real prospects. The werewolf lured me into a bout of drinking with that scoundrel from the
Echo Hustle and Bustle
. How we went to town that night. Sound the alarm! I just let my hair down and blabbed to him, friend to friend. I told him some Court gossip, and the next morning an article came out about it. The fellow didn’t hesitate to stir up a sensation. He stood the whole town on its ear for a dozen days! The dinner was over once and for all. You catch, Max?”

“A sad story,” I said. “That’s how it goes. Don’t worry, Anday. You have a good career now, too.”

“It’s not a career, it’s a bunch of crap!” said the courtier-turned-reporter. “Writing for any old stinky pleb who can’t even read without sounding out the words, if he can read at all. You think they pay me for that? You can forget about it. They just pay lousy rotten pennies, if they pay anything at all. I could be a real writer. Go to Tasher, and—”

“Why to Tasher?”

I knew about Tasher only from the account of my acquaintance Captain Giatta, who was forever in my debt for saving him from a most unpleasant and disgusting form of death. Sir Juffin had rather unceremoniously tried to liberate the poor guy from his valuable mother-of-pearl belt, a horrific bejeweled luxury item made by the mad Magician Xropper Moa. I stood by and, when it became necessary, was able to share the pain of the enchanted captain.

It was harrowing, but we both remained alive. Finally unbuckled, Captain Giatta settled down in Echo. He announced that he was dutybound to repay my good deed with another. Until he repaid this debt of honor, he would live in the Capital of the Unified Kingdom so as always to be near at hand. I had tried thinking up a few trivial requests a few times, but the perspicacious Tasherian always responded sternly, “You don’t really need me to do that.” I had to admit, he saw right through me.

The clever captain lived quite comfortably in Echo. Guys like him always land on their feet in life. So maybe it was all for the best.

I never passed up an opportunity to collect information about this still unfamiliar World, so the Tasherian captain had to keep up with a barrage of questions when I was around. And his stories had not led me to believe that Tasher was a refuge for intellectuals—quite the contrary.

“You no catch, Max! It’s warm there,” Anday said with a dreamy look in his eye. “Fruit grows in your backyard. And I’ve heard that in Tasher anyone who knows how to read and write commands a great deal of respect. All the philistines bow down before even a semiliterate person. They worship the ground he walks on. You catch? Think of how they must treat a writer! Sound the alarm!”

“It stands to reason,” I said, laughing.

“May I come in, Sir Max?” The impressive nose of Captain Shixola peeked in the door. “Oh, pardon me. Do you have visitors?”

“It’s a friend. But we won’t be long. Come back in a few minutes, all right?”

“Of course,” said Shixola, withdrawing his nose from my office.

Anday’s almond-shaped eyes turned sad again. Apparently he had hoped our entertaining discussion would continue. Maybe he even supposed that the free dinner would seamlessly turn into breakfast. “Wait for me in the reception room, friend. I have to discuss some matters with my colleague, and then we can keep on shooting the breeze.”

It was a long time since I had been so agreeable. Had he put a spell on me by any chance?

“In the reception room?” Anday said gloomily. “Thank you, Sir Max, but I think I’ll be going. You are no doubt busy, and I want to look in on Chemparkaroke. I could do with a hefty portion of Soup of Repose right now. All these sinning memories, you know . . . By the way, Max, how are you doing for cash these days? I mean, could you lend me a crown? I hope Sir Rogro won’t forget to pay me for the story about your cats. Then I could pay you back tomorrow.”

“I seem to have even more than one crown. How rich I am, unbelievable.”

I fished out a few coins from the desk drawer. I’m not sure they were even mine. Juffin and I regularly emptied out the contents of our pockets in the drawer before we set out for another encounter with a lawbreaker. When loose change starts spilling out of the pockets of the looxi of a Secret Investigator at such crucial moments, it looks rather silly and undermines the criminal’s sense of awe.

“Thank you, Sir Max. You sure do catch. Sound the alarm! Tomorrow I’ll . . . or maybe the next day . . .”

“Don’t bother to pay me back. Consider it the fee for your rejected masterpiece. By the way, I advise you not to show up with it around here anymore. I’m a nice guy. You don’t even have to call me ‘sir’ if you don’t want to. But for publishing filth like that I might just kill. Do you believe me?”